The Field Trip podcast takes a tour through the world of pickles, meeting a couple of masters of the tangy arts. They talk to Sandor Ellix Katz, who muses on the long and delicious history of our relationship to ferments. That section starts around 16:58, and is well worth a listen!

He answers questions like: What does it smell like in your kitchen right now?

And: How do you know that the sauerkraut you’ve been fermenting at room temperature on your kitchen counter for weeks won’t kill you?

The answer to that one is striking. According to Sandor there has never been a recorded case of food poisoning from fermented vegetables. Which means that fermented vegetables are far safer than raw ones, as several of the most devastating recent outbreaks of food-borne illness have come rolling down the produce aisle — not from the slaughterhouse as you might have suspected.

Read the Book

Bread. Cheese. Wine. Beer. Coffee. Chocolate. Most people consume fermented foods and drinks every day. For thousands of years, humans have enjoyed the distinctive flavors and nutrition resulting from the transformative power of microscopic bacteria and fungi. Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods is the first cookbook to widely explore the culinary magic of fermentation.